


Fly Me to the Moon

by jat_sapphire



Series: Cabaret Set [4]
Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M, Sleep Deprivation, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 17:54:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16142447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jat_sapphire/pseuds/jat_sapphire
Summary: Refresher training is exhausting.  Really, really exhausting.





	Fly Me to the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to ArwenOak, without whom this would be one story instead of four.

>   
>  _Fly me to the moon_  
>  _And let me play among the stars,_  
>  _Let me see what spring is like_  
>  _On Jupiter and Mars_

What exactly Cowley had told Macklin concerning Bodie and Doyle would never be communicated to them, of course, but Bodie was ready to bet that it had been something like “Batter Doyle, and beat Bodie to pieces when he intervenes.” Certainly Bodie had been flying through the air more in these past few hours than at any time since Barry Martin used to toss them around like beanbags.

Just now, Macklin might have broken Doyle's jaw if Bodie hadn't pulled his arm aside, and in return taken a blow on his cheekbone that would certainly bruise. Doyle already had a black eye. Soon the office grapevine would say the two partners had been fistfighting.

That might be less embarrassing than the truth.

When they finally had a chance to catch their breath and drink some water, Bodie said, “I hope you're enjoying this.”

“Enjoying?”

“Well, somebody should. Beside Brian.”

Doyle took another swig of water. “You know it's not about that.”

“It's about _nonsense_. I never have trouble reacting when you're hurt right in front of me, when I can see you. I froze when you were out of sight and I didn't know what had happened, whether you were alive or spattered all over the front hallway of that safe house.”

Doyle winced. “As someone said to me recently, ta for the image.”

“We're wasting our time, and both getting hurt.”

So they ended up training in scenarios. Knowing it was all his own fault did not make Bodie feel any better. He tried to concentrate on the fact that neither Macklin nor Towser were there to throw them around, but a grenade blast turned their cover into matchsticks and blew them over the hay bales behind them, and it was hard to consider that an improvement.

He hadn't had _time_ to freeze.

The next scenario had them farther apart when the enemies struck, so he could see Doyle but had to let him cope while Bodie got on with defeating his own opponent. He finished first, so he was still able to back up Doyle.

The task after that gave them objectives they had to meet separately. Not in sight of each other. He turned on Doyle during the setup. “You _told_ them.”

“No.” Doyle's gaze was clear. But he was always good under cover. Bodie stared into eyes he had been sure he knew as well as his own. “ _No_ ,” Doyle repeated. “They read the reports, Bodie.”

"Cowley never reads the reports. Just asks me."

"Macklin and Jack, then."

Probably true. He didn't freeze or fail during this scenario, either.

In the next one, Doyle was taken hostage. The background information said the captors were terrorists who needed to move quickly and nimbly, no extra baggage. Bodie negotiated, not usually one of his best roles. This time he succeeded. He got Doyle back, dishevelled and cross. “You gave them a car!” he complained.

“Yes, I should have held out until they started sending out bits of you in boxes.”

Doyle grinned. “Lobbing them out the window.”

“Or letting out the dog with a package tied round its neck.”

“And you'd shoot it, thinking it was bringing a bomb.”

“It's a drawback,” Bodie admitted. “But there wasn't enough time to think of everything.”

They were exhausted. For once, Bodie found it easy not to watch Doyle in the showers and the changing room. Less easy not to touch while they waited to debrief.

 

> _In other words, hold my hand_  
>  _In other words, darling, kiss me_  
> 

They sat on the bench together, heads hanging forward, shoulders not eight inches apart. Their hands were closer. Bruised and bumped and strained, not a word of crosstalk or a smile left to them, their hands slid a millimetre at a time, like magnets aligning. Their pinkies just barely brushed; their hands stilled.

Doyle was called to interview first. When he came out, Bodie could not tell whether his set face and dull eyes were solely due to fatigue. “Wait, shall I?” he asked, even his voice dragging.

“Ta, mate.” Bodie hauled himself off the bench, to his feet. The soles were sore. Doyle patted his shoulder as he walked by.

“Got high marks,” he said.

“Oh, good.”

Slogging out of the office was even harder. Bodie looked longingly at the bench but was honestly afraid that if he sat down he would not be able to stand again, get down the stairs and into the car.

“Let's go,” he said, articulating carefully.

Doyle didn't bounce, but got up with enough force to make Bodie eye him resentfully.

As always, or almost always, Doyle read him. “I'll drive, then.” Bodie dug the keys out of his pocket and handed them over.

In the car, Doyle turned to him instead of starting the engine. “All right, what were your marks?”

Bodie made an outrageous downturned mouth.

“No!” Doyle protested, then looked again. “You're having me on, you berk.”

“Only two points down. Almost perfect.”

“I don't know how you have the energy to take the piss,” Doyle said, turning the key in the ignition at last.

“I don't either.” Bodie closed his eyes. Just for a moment. When he opened them, it was because Doyle was poking him in the shoulder, and the car was parked outside his flat. Bodie groaned.

“ _You're_ groaning. I'm the one who had to stay awake and drive.”

“We could just stay here, kip in the car,” he tried out.

“No,” Doyle said firmly. “There's a perfectly good bed up there, and I want half of it.”

Bodie found himself smiling, reaching for Doyle's hand. They grasped hard, held for a long moment, until Doyle yawned, which of course made Bodie follow suit. “OK,” Bodie said, let go, and managed to open the car door. Got himself out, swaying slightly as if drunk.

The two of them made their careful way into the building, up the stairs, into the flat. Bodie squinted at the locks, but got them set.

“You,” he said in the bedroom, “are the only one who could get me undressed at this moment.” Doyle grinned. “I'd just have fallen on the bed and let … let me shoes ...”

“Let's just assume something really clever ended that sentence,” said Doyle, who had knelt to untie the shoes in question.

“OK.” Bodie wrestled with his holster. “Ta, mate.”

They left both holsters on the bedside table, and the clothes where they fell or were stepped out of.

In the bed, Bodie took a deep breath, feeling sleep sweep over him like a wave. Just before he was submerged, he heard Doyle's voice.

“Bodie.” Then, more urgently, “ _Bodie_.”

“Mm?” He pulled his eyes open as Doyle's hand on his cheek turned his head.

Doyle kissed him. Bodie tried to kiss back. “Thank you, sunshine,” Doyle told him. “You did great.”

He knew that, didn't he? But he'd have to remind Doyle in the morning that he was the best. And Doyle was second best.

 

>   
>  _Fill my heart with song_  
>  _and let me sing forevermore_  
>  _You are all I long for,_  
>  _all I worship and adore_

 

Bodie was sure he hadn't slept more than an hour. It seemed like only a few minutes later, in fact, when he woke to Doyle nibbling and manhandling him. Felt good, but fatigue was still weighing him down, so he couldn't enjoy it as much as he'd have liked. “Wha', Ray?” he mumbled.

“I shouldn't've let you sleep,” Ray said, and at least he sounded tired, too. “Told me in debrief, didn't they, we did so well it's torture training next. An' you know what's the first part of that.”

“Sleep deprivation. Oh joy.”

“Yeah. But I thought, don't have to pinch you or fill you with coffee. Can love you to pieces and keep you awake that way. And me too.”

“Brill—” Bodie yawned, “—iant. I approve.”

“Then join in any time.”

So he kissed Ray and held those round, muscled arse-cheeks in his hands, helping their bodies slide against each other and looking into Ray's red-veined, pouched eyes. “You look terrible,” he said lovingly.

“Yeah, so do you.” Ray sucked in the crease where Bodie's neck met his shoulder.

“Ow.” Bodie squirmed.

A groping hand met Bodie's prick, now half-hard. “Good, you're waking up.”

“They'll see the mark.”

“Could be from last night, some bird.”

Bodie sighed.

“You know we have to.” Ray sounded sad, but certain.

“I suppose.”

“Kiss me,” Ray said against Bodie's mouth.

Bodie agreed it was better than the non-argument they'd been having. He just hoped that the real secret of the love they were making now didn't spill out while he was keeping the fake secrets safe during the fake torture.

 

>   
>  _In other words, please be true_

 

The training sadists had kept him from sleeping for nearly three days now. He didn't count the hour or two Doyle had allowed him in the car and in his own bed. Bodie felt some unholy combination of drunk, hungover and concussed. His head buzzed; his gut ached; his eyes were full of sand. He knew there had been a reason for doing this, but he no longer remembered what it was.

They knew he could adapt to bad conditions—they'd taught him how, when they were Macklin and Towser and Jack instead of They, the torturers—so they kept changing the conditions: loud, sudden noises; cold air and water sprays; restraints that kept Bodie standing; stinging cords that whipped him; loud music. Whenever he fell asleep, they woke him.

They asked him questions, and he answered with random lies. Sometimes his incoherence was voluntary, but sometimes he slept for a second or so and dreamed vividly in the middle of a sentence. The dreams varied, but they were usually about Ray.

That was why, when they brought Doyle into the interrogation cell, he didn't immediately believe it was his real partner that he was seeing.

Ray's hair was a mess, clumped and ratted, and he seemed dirtier than the scenarios or just not bathing could have made him. He was skimpily dressed, handcuffed, bruised. His eyes burned like holes in his face. Just in case he was real, Bodie called to him: “They torturing you too, mate?”

“Course.” The voice sounded like Doyle's.

“Should we tell 'em?”

“No, Bodie, don't.”

The chief torturer, who wore a hood, came in then and said, “Bodie, since you won't tell us what we ask, Doyle here will pay the price.”

“Out of pocket? Don' think he has pockets on, eh? Ray, you got a pocket to pay from, a pot to piss in? Or d'we take the piss, eh?”

Doyle just stared at him.

“Tell us the safe house location,” said the man in the hood.

“They won't really cut off your fingers,” Bodie reassured Doyle. “All this training, too expensive if you can't shoot y'r gun. No good to Cowley then.”

“Mate ...” Doyle shook his head. “You're off your head.”

Bodie agreed. “Too barking to talk.”

Two other torturers held Doyle's arms. The chief one brought out a metal device. “This administers electric shocks. Like this.” He touched it to his captive's chest, and Doyle jumped and jerked, crying out.

“Ray!” Bodie shouted.

“Tell us the address,” said the man in the hood.

Bodie shook his head. “Let him go!”

This went on for what seemed like the whole day. There came a time when Doyle hung limp between the torturers, and they let his body fall to the floor.

“You did that,” they told Bodie in between asking for the safe house address. “You killed him.”

Bodie only replied, “Kill me then.” He knew that was the right answer.

Then, miraculously, it was over. Macklin took off the hood. Doyle got up from the floor, not entirely steady, but not dead. He came straight to Bodie and untied him, put one arm around his waist to help him stand. “You're a marvel,” he said. “Bodie, you've won.”

“No point in a debrief now,” Macklin said. “Go home, sleep, come back Friday.”

 

>   
>  _In other words, I love you_

 

Doyle showered himself, then washed and redressed Bodie, who couldn't get steps in order, hold the clothes right way round, balance on one foot to get his pants on, and so forth. They staggered together to the lift, out to the car park, and sat together in the back seat while Charlie drove them. “Home, James,” said Bodie grandly, and Doyle sputtered.

They made it to the lounge in Bodie's flat, also with Charlie's help, and Bodie collapsed on the couch and contemplated the cracks in the ceiling. “That one looks like the Guinness toucan,” he said when Doyle sat down beside him. “See? There?”

“Oh, Bodie.” Doyle's voice was unsteady. “What I put you through.”

“'S all right.” Bodie turned his head slowly because it was still spinning. He didn't think he'd ever seen Doyle's face from quite that angle. “You were right. I won't hesitate, and you won't be anybody else's partner. We'll fuck at night and work in the daytime.”

Doyle petted his hair for a change. It did feel nice, but Bodie's eyes wouldn't stay open.

“You are the truest, bravest, strongest, fiercest, most loyal, most loving partner in the world.” Doyle's voice made colours behind his eyelids.

“Handsomest,” Bodie mumbled.

“Tall, dark and beautiful, time to get your sexy self to bed. We'll both be sore enough without sleeping on the couch.”

“You mean stand up?”

“I do mean it.” The sound of Doyle's voice moved, got farther away, above him. Bodie groped after it, and Doyle gripped his hand. “Come on, big lug. Sit up first.”

“Open m'eyes first.”

“You're right.” Doyle tapped his cheek, so Bodie dragged up his eyelids. Then, with Doyle's hand guiding him, sat, then lurched to his feet, then stumbled step by step to the bedroom, where Doyle peeled his clothes off and let him fall at last onto the mattress. He groaned with relief.

“I should leave you to sleep,” said Doyle, still clothed and irritatingly coherent.

“Don't leave ever,” Bodie meant to say, but even he himself hardly understood it.

But Doyle pulled his own clothes off, turned off the lamp, and clambered into bed. “I do love you,” he said as he put an arm over Bodie.

Bodie smiled as sleep swallowed him.

 

>   
>  _With music and words_  
>  _I've been playing_  
>  _For you, I have written a song_  
>  _To be sure that you know_  
>  _What I'm saying, I'll translate_  
>  _As I go along_  
> 

 

* g *


End file.
